The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 5

He even fancied that in that lower darkness he caught the momentary dull glint of metal reflecting some half light, and an impression of furtive movement struck in upon him. But after a moment's scrutiny, which failed to clarify the picture, he decided that his imagination had invented the vague shape out of nothing more tangible than shadow.

If there had been a man there he seemed to have dissolved now.

So Spurrier turned away.

Had his eyes possessed a nearer kinship to those of the cat, which can read the dark, he would have altered his course of action from that instant forward. He would, first, have gone to the captain and demanded permission to search the steerage for an ex-private of the infantry company that had lately been his own; a private against whose name on the muster roll stood the entry: "Dead or deserted."

Yet when he turned on his heel and pa.s.sed from the lighted area he unconsciously walked out of range of a revolver aimed at his breast--thereby temporarily settling for the man who fingered the trigger his question, "to shoot or not to shoot."

For Private Grant, a fleeing deserter, convalescent from fever and lunacy, had been casting up the chances of his own life just then and debating the dangers and advantages of letting Spurrier live.

Recognizing his former officer as he himself looked out of his hiding, his first impulse had been one of panic terror and in Spurrier he had seen a pursuer.

The finger had twitched nervously on the trigger--then while he wavered in decision the other had calmly walked out of range. Now, if he kept out of sight until they reached Frisco, the deserter told himself, a larger territory would spread itself for his escape than the confines of a steamer, and he belonged to a race that can bide its time.

CHAPTER IV

Spurrier entered the smoke room and stood for a moment in its threshold.

There were uniforms there, and some men in them whom he had known, though now these other-time acquaintances avoided his eye and the necessity of an embarra.s.sment which must have come from meeting it.

But from an alcove seat near the door rose a stocky gentleman, well groomed and indubitably distinguished of guise, who had been tearing the covering from a bridge deck.

"Spurrier, my boy," he exclaimed cordially, "I'm glad to see you. I read your name on the list. Won't you join us?"

This was the man who had rolled away the mountains of official inertia and saved him from prison; who had stipulated with his daughter that she should not write to him in his cell; and who now embraced the first opportunity to greet him publicly with cordial words. Here, reflected the cashiered soldier, was poise more calculated than his own, and he smiled as he shook his head, giving the answer which he knew to be expected of him.

"No, thank you, senator." Then he added a request: "But if these gentlemen can spare you for a few minutes I would appreciate a word with you."

"Certainly, my boy." With a glance about the little company which made his excuses, Beverly rose and linked his arm through Spurrier's, but when they stood alone on deck that graciousness stiffened immediately into manner more austere.

"I've seen Augusta," began the younger man briefly, "and told her I wouldn't seek to hold her to her promise. I suppose that meets with your approval?"

The public man, whom rumor credited with presidential aspirations, nodded. "Under the circ.u.mstances it is necessary. I may as well be candid. I tried vainly to persuade her to throw you over entirely, but I had to end in a compromise. She agreed not to communicate with you in any manner until your trial came to its conclusion."

The cashiered officer felt his temples hammering with the surge of indignant blood to his forehead. This man who had so studiedly and successfully feigned genuine pleasure at seeing him, when other eyes were looking on, was telling him now with salamander coolness that he had urged upon his daughter the policy of callous desertion. The impulse toward resentful retort was almost overpowering, but with it came the galling recognition that, except for Beverly's bull-dog pertinacity, Spurrier himself would have been a life-termer, and that now humility became him better than anger.

"Did you seek to have Augusta throw me over, without even a farewell--because you believed me guilty, sir?" His inquiry came quietly and the older man shook a noncommittal head.

"It's not so much what I think as what the world will think," he made even response. "To put it in the kindest words, Spurrier, you rest under a cloud."

"Senator," said the other in measured syllables, "I rest, also, under a great weight of obligation to you, but, there were times, sir, when for a note from her I'd willingly have accepted the death penalty."

"I won't pretend that I fail to understand--even to sympathize with you," came the answer. "You must see none the less that I had no alternative. Augusta's husband must be--well, like Caesar's wife."

"There is nothing more to be said, I think," admitted Spurrier, and the senator held out his hand.

"In every other matter, I feel only as your friend. It will be better if to other eyes our relations remain cordial. Otherwise my efforts on your behalf would give the busy-bodies food for gossip. That's what we are both seeking to avoid."

Spurrier bowed and watched the well-groomed figure disappear.

The cloudless days and the brilliant nights of low-hung stars and phosphor waters were times of memorable opportunity and paradise for other lovers on that steamer. For Spurrier they were purgatorial and when he realized Augusta Beverly's clearly indicated wish that he should leave her free from the embarra.s.sment of any tete-a-tete, he knew definitely that her silence was as final as words could have made it. The familiar panama hat seen at intervals and the curve of the cheek that he had once been privileged to kiss seemed now to belong to an orbit of life remote from his own with an utterness of distance no less actual because intangible.

The young soldier's nature, which had been prodigally generous, began to harden into a new and unlovely bitterness. Once he pa.s.sed her as she leaned on the rail with a young lieutenant who was going to the States on his first leave from Island duty, and when the girl met his eyes and nodded, the cub of an officer looked up--and cut him dead with needless ostentation.

For the old general, who had pretended not to see him, Jack Spurrier had felt only the sympathy due to a man bound and embarra.s.sed by a severe code of etiquette, but with this c.o.c.ksure young martinet, his hands itched for chastis.e.m.e.nt.

Throughout the trying voyage Spurrier felt that Snowdon, the engineer, was holding him under an interested sort of observation, and this surveillance he mildly resented, though the entire politeness of the other left him helpless to make his feeling outspoken. But when they had stood off from Honolulu and brought near to completion the last leg of the Pacific voyage, Snowdon invited him into his own stateroom and with candid directness spoke his mind.

"Spurrier," he began, "I'd like to have a straight talk with you if you will accept my a.s.surance of the most friendly motive."

Spurrier was not immediately receptive. He sat eying the other for a little while with a slight frown between his eyes, but in the end he nodded.

"I should dislike to seem churlish," he answered slowly. "But I've had my nerves rubbed raw of late, and they haven't yet grown callous."

"You see, it's rather in my line," suggested Snowdon by way of preface, "to a.s.say the minerals of character in men and to gauge the percentage of pay-dirt that lies in the lodes of their natures. So I've watched you, and if you care to have the results of my superficial research, I'm ready to report. No man knows himself until introduced to himself by another, because one can't see one's self at sufficient distance to gain perspective."

Spurrier smiled. "So you're like the announcer at a boxing match," he suggested. "You're ready to say, 'Plunger Spurrier, shake hands with Jack Spurrier--both members of this club.'"

"Precisely," a.s.sented Snowdon as naturally as though there had been no element of facetiousness in the suggestion. "And now in the first place, what do you mean to do with yourself?"

"I have no idea."

"I suppose you have thought of the possibilities open to a West Point man--as a soldier of fortune?"

"Yes," the answer was unenthusiastic. "Thought of them and discarded them."

"Why?"

The voice laughed and then spoke contemptuously.

"A man's sword belongs to his flag. It can no more be honorably hired out than a woman's love. I can see in either only a form of prost.i.tution."

"Good!" exclaimed Snowdon heartily. "I couldn't have coached you to a better answer. Are you financially independent?"

"On the contrary, I have nothing. Until now there was my pay and----"

He paused there but went on again with a dogged self-forcing. "I might as well confess that the gaming table has always left a balance on my side of the ledger."

"I haven't seen you playing since you came aboard."

"No. I've cut that out----"

"Good again--and that brings us to where I stop eliciting information about yourself and begin giving it. I had heard of your gambling exploits before I saw you. I found that you had that cold quality of nerve which a few gamblers have, fewer than are credited with it, by far! Incidentally, it's precisely the same quality that makes notable generals--and adroit diplomats--if they have the other qualities to support it. It's sublimated self-control and boldness. You were using it badly, but it was because you were seeking an outlet through the wrong channels. So I studied you, quite impersonally. Your situation on board wasn't easy or enviable. You knew that eyes followed you and tongues wagged about you with a morbid interest. You saw chatting groups fall abruptly silent when you approached them and officers you had once fraternized with look hurriedly elsewhere. In short, my young friend, you have faced an acid test of ordeal, and you have borne yourself with neither the defiance of braggadocio, nor the visible hint of flinching. If I were looking for a certain type of specialized ability, I should say you had qualified."

A flush spread on the face of the listener.